Embed code

Sangye Tashi, 18, died after setting himself on fire Tuesday around 11 pm in Sangchu county in Gansu Province in eastern Tibet. Sangay reportedly shouted slogans calling for return of the Dalai Lama and release of the Panchen Lama and all Tibetan political prisoners.

Sources say local Tibetans then carried the deceased's body a nearby house. Sangay Tashi is survived by his parents and four siblings.

Another Tibetan, 23 years old Thubwang Kyab, died at the same site of self-immolation on October 26. Today's protest is the 87th self-immolation by Tibetans from Tibet since February 2009. In November, 25 Tibetans have self-immolated themselves to protest Chinese policies.

Analysts say the Tibetan struggle against Chinese rule may have entered a new phase judging by the recent increase in self-immolation protests.

Robert Barnett of New York's Columbia University told VOA that the self-immolations seem to have become more deliberate in recent weeks.

He says the first phase of self-immolations began last year with monks and nuns trying to protect their monasteries from security crackdowns.

But he notes that the second wave, which occurred for most of the past year, involved individuals in small towns sharing sympathy with those monks and nuns.

"But now in this phase we have laypeople staging these immolations in ways that are much more determined in an attempt to get a response from Chinese authorities, by having immolations in clusters, very close together, many on the same day or within a few days and many in the same place," said Barnett.

James Leibold, a Tibet analyst for Australia's Latrobe University in Beijing, tells VOA that a broader segment of the Tibetan community is also involved in the latest protests.

"We've got the provinces that sort of surround the Tibetan autonomous region all having self-immolations in the last couple months, as well as the diversity of the people involved, in terms of age ranges, in terms of occupations. Both laypeople and monks and nuns [are] involved in these self-immolations. Without a doubt, it's really reaching a crisis point," said Leibold.

Many activists, including Tenzin Dolkar of the advocacy group Students for a Free Tibet, say the increase in self-immolations is aimed at sending a message to China's new leaders that Tibetans will continue their non-violent struggle for freedom.

"It seems Tibetans are really trying to put the Tibet issue on the map for the new Chinese leadership and to make sure Tibet truly becomes the top priority as Xi Jinping and his team take over," said Dolkar.

Some hold out hope that Xi Jinping, who is taking over China's top leadership spot, will be more sympathetic toward the plight of Tibetans, since his late father had a close relationship with the Dalai Lama in the 1950s.

But Leibold says so far there is no indication that the government has changed its position on Tibet.

"Sadly, we hear the same rhetoric coming out of Beijing, and Chinese officials continually blaming a few black hands for collaborating with the Dalai Lama and the exiled Tibetan community to stir up trouble and to damage China's ethnic unity and harmony. There's just absolutely no will, it seems, to admit a failure of policy," he said.

China says Tibetans enjoy full religious freedom and benefit from better living standards linked to Chinese investment in underdeveloped Tibetan regions. Beijing has accused the Dalai Lama of inciting the self-immolations to promote Tibetan separatism, a charge he denies.